Learn English – the meaning of “dignant”

meaning

The novelist Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim (1954) uses the word though he puts it in quotation marks. It appears three times in the novel.

First use:

"Well, if you drink as much as that you must expect to feel a bit
off-colour the next day, mustn't you?" She drew herself upright in her
seat in a schoolmarm attitude.
He remembered his father, who until the war had always worn stiff white collars, being reproved by the objurgatory jeweller as
excessively "dignant" in demeanour. This etymological sport
expressed for Dixon exactly what he objected to in Christine. He said
rather coldly: "Yes, I must mustn't I?"

Second use:

How well really the Callaghan girl had behaved, in spite of her
stand-offishness at times, and how sound her suggestion had been.
That, and her laughing fit, proved that she wasn't as "dignant" as
she looked. He remembered uneasily the awful glow of her skin, the
distressing clarity of her eyes, the immoderate whiteness of those
slightly irregular teeth.

Third use:

"Not that I think there's anything foolish in coming to see you. Oh, I
just don't seem to be able to put it in any way that sounds at all
sensible." Little by little and intermittently, she was adopting her
"dignant" tone and physical attitude.

There is no OED entry for dignant

Best Answer

I assume Dignant is made up of dignity + ant, hence it is a person who possesses dignity.

According to the urban dictionary:

Dignant: To have and display dignity.

Acknowledgement of another individual within or about to enter ones own personal space.

"The newspaper boy was dignant enough to say hi to me this morning on my way to the store."

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